Google: indirectly, ugly websites might get lower rankings

In a webmaster hangout on YouTube, a webmaster asked if ugly websites, or difficult to use websites, have ranking issues on Google. Google’s John Mueller said that these websites could get bad rankings because there aren’t many positive signals (such as recommendations through links):

“How likely is an ugly or difficult to use site, how likely that could cause ranking issues, so that’s an interesting question.

I think for the most part, this is something where you’re more likely to see indirect effects in the sense that when users go to your web pages and they really don’t know what they need to do there, then probably they won’t recommend your site to other people and then over time this indirect effect may grow in the sense that we don’t see a lot of signals that are like positive for this site.”

You can view John’s answer here:

Ugly websites do not convert

If you have an ugly website that is difficult to use, you should do something about that. Ugly websites do not convert, even if they might get ranked on Google. The tools in SEOprofiler help you to optimize your pages. You can create your free SEOprofiler account here: